Plant design: The Parisian jungle

In the past, during the long winter months in Paris, there was hardly a stem or stalk of green in sight. Now every month has its verdant pleasures. Architects and designers have transformed the capital into a leafy haven where the concrete sprouts with flowers. It’s a breath of fresh air for the city’s oxygen-starved residents, whichever neighborhood they live in. This new breed of designers tests, shapes and hones their research to reconcile nature and urban planning, design and technology, vegetable and mineral, reasoned design and the wilderness. Pioneer Patrick Nadeau – the first plant designer, inventor of the concept, and creator of environments where plants are an integral part of buildings and architecture – is the common ancestor of most designers working today. The research done by famous botanist, Patrick Blanc, has also had a big impact. He has revolutionized the look of metropolises, from Paris to Singapore, with his spectacular planted walls that cling to the sides of buildings, creating vast green-shaded tableaux and reliefs sculpted by the thickness of leaves.

Paris has proven to be fertile ground for his designs. After creating his first in 1986 at the Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie (19th), the musée du quai Branly (7th), the Pershing Hall hotel (8th), luxury stores and head offices have all featured his work, not forgetting the wall on rue d’Aboukir (2nd), which is a moving sight, whatever the season. Patrick Blanc doesn’t see himself as an artist; he’s a seeker of green gold, excited by the rising sap of discovery. Much in demand, he’s a regular contributor to top design events, like the Milan Furniture Fair, and is looked up to by younger designers like Amaury Gallon, founder of Jardins de Babylone, who restored the wall at the musée du quai Branly. Winner of France’s top landscape architecture award – the Victoires du Paysage – in 2016 for Axa’s hanging gardens, Jardins de Babylone were also awarded the title of Paris Sustainability Actor by Paris city hall for the exterior wall of the EDF’s head office on the Champs-Élysées. The Paris regional transport authority – the RATP – has commissioned him to vegetalize the Jaurès metro station on Line 6, in the 19th arrondissement. He has selected 145 species from the Paris region for their ability to grow without much water. The design includes plant-shaped windowboxes created especially by Jardins de Babylone. “We use organic materials, because we’re dealing with plants after all, although for the platforms we had to go with artificial plants, it was technically or practically impossible otherwise,” explains Gallon.

Landscape architect and urban planner, Gallon is also a designer. He created the spectacular Kodama plant lamp filled with stabilized moss glimpsed through an openwork structure, a reference to the primal forest of Yakushima in Japan. The idea is echoed in the work of prominent plant designer Alexis Tricoire, whose phantasmagorical creations include exhibitions and installations at the Grand Palais, the Jardin des Tuileries (8th), the Museum d’histoire naturelle (5th) and the Cité de la Mode et du Design (13th). Oddly, he stumbled into the field by chance. Asked by Patrick Blanc to handle the scenography for his exhibition at the Espace Electra a decade ago, he immersed water plants in large test tubes representing cave plants under a lush ceiling.